Don't buy your friends

Yesterday night I watched this short piece at CNN's International Desk. It was about animal shelters in Japan. It turns out the shelters there need to euthanize as many as 90% of the pets they admit! The space being limited and new poor ones flowing in all the time, there's no other choice. Apparently the Japanese hardly ever adopt pets, as the ones in the shelters are the ones that are not 'in fashion' any more. It is a sad truth, but there are people who base their decision on getting a dog or a cat on such things as what's trendy at the moment. It turns out in Japan if you want other people to look up to you, you can't' just have any dog or cat.

Unfortunately this problem doesn't concern Japan only. The choice of buying a pet from a breeder or adopting one from the shelter exists everywhere. Why am I writing about this? Because you don't need to be vegetarian to do something good for animals, there's a lot of other things you can do. You guessed right, I am going to bother you with them from time to time ;)

I would be extremely happy if people who want to get a dog or a cat (or any other pet!) would actually stop and think for a moment before buying one. A simple fact –there are 15 dogs and 45 cats for every person in the United States. Is it really morally justified to breed more pets, while a great majority of the homeless ones will have to be put down at the shelters? Unfortunately I have come to accept euthanasia as the only humane solution, much more humane them keeping the animals for years in bad conditions, without a chance for adoption, which is a practice of some shelters.

Why would you want to buy a pet instead of giving a home and your heart to one who really needs it and whose fate depends on people like you? People buy specific breeds because they make them look cool, more trendy or more dangerous. That's why we have so many 'dangerous breeds' – dogs who can definitely become dangerous if the owners can't handle them properly. Or because a dog 'in fashion' seems to upgrade their social status in the eyes of others. There are a few words that could describe what I think about this, but maybe I'll keep it to myself for now ;)

I have had many cats and dogs in my life, never bought any, though. They were (are;) stray dogs and cats, pets of late relatives, pets adopted from people whose own pets got babies. I can't imagine actually paying for a friend, because this is what a pet is.